Stories from Botswana 2004!

Stories from my last trip to Botswana


*I thought I would share a few stories from my last trip to Botswana in 2004 that relate to what I referred to in my last blog post. It was when I first used the Victoria Falls analogy and saw the Lord use it to impact hearts:

One day [in June 2004], we were at a high school in northern Botswana doing AIDS awareness/prevention, and an 18-year-old boy came up to me during some downtime and asked me a peculiar question. He asked if I could show him in the Bible where it says which day is truly the Sabbath...Saturday or Sunday. I thought it was kind of a minor detail that, in the big picture, didn’t make much difference; what matters is if your heart is right with God. But he was insistent to know for sure. He even had a list of every scripture regarding the Sabbath that he’d gotten from a pastor. Along the way he said something that made me see the deeper misconception and confusion he had—he said, “But if I break just one law, I’ve broken the whole law.” Ah! -- from that I realized that he was trying to be right with God by the law, by trying to follow every law and command of God. I shared that James had made that statement (James 2:10) about breaking the whole law precisely to make the point that we are all going to break at least one law (because no one is perfect and can obey all of them), and therefore we are all sinners guilty of breaking the whole law. All have sinned, and each person’s sin causes a separation between them and God, who is holy and sinless.

Then God gave me the idea to use Victoria Falls, world famous waterfalls right near Botswana, in an analogy. So I shared the analogy with him [Read the last post, if you haven’t yet, for the analogy].

I went on to share with him that Ephesians 2:8 states, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God – not the result of works, so that no one may boast.” So it is by faith in Christ and repenting of our sin and trusting in His forgiveness that we can cross over to God, not by doing good works or trying to follow every commandment. So the boy I was sharing all this with asked, “Then should we then just disregard the law and commandments and not bother doing good works?” We had been looking at Romans 3 at the time and the very next verse answered perfectly: “Do we then, throw out the law by this faith? Of course not! Rather, we uphold the law.”

And the next verse in Ephesians (after saying it’s by faith, not works, that we are saved), says, “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Thus, we should not do good works or obey the commandments as a means by which we are “saved”, to earn our way to heaven, but we should still be doing good works as a natural outflow of our love for Him and as a result of our relationship with Him. For example, you can’t be made right with God just by going to church every Sunday – if you haven’t trusted in Christ’s forgiveness and entered into a personal relationship with God, going to church is just an example of long-jumping across Victoria Falls in vain. But does that mean you shouldn’t go to church once you’ve accepted Christ as your Savior? Of course not! It is just now a result of your faith and love for Christ, not a means by which you are earning your salvation. So likewise, you can still do good works and try to follow His law, but out of a different motivation, that of love, not fear.

After I explained this all to the boy and wrote it out and drew him the picture of Victoria Falls and Christ as the bridge, it really seemed like he understood it. Two days later, I came upon him in a group of people and when he turned and saw me, his face lit up. In his hand, he was still clutching the paper on which I’d written the analogy and he held it up and excitedly exclaimed, “This has meant so much to me...I understand it! It’s true! It’s in my heart! It’s changed me!” I replied, “That’s great! But don’t keep it to yourself—tell your friends and others here at school!” He replied, “Oh, I already did that yesterday!” As we parted ways, he shook my hand, looked intently in my eyes and said, “Thank you...I will never forget this…I will never forget you.” It was just amazing to see how God had set him free from trying to follow every single law out of fear in order to get to heaven—worrying which day the Sabbath was on in case he might be breaking that one rule—to the point now where he understands the good news and forgiveness in Christ.

A few weeks later, July 10th rolled around (which is a very significant date in my spiritual journey and calling to Botswana). We were going hut-to-hut (or house-to-house) sharing the gospel, and I’d never thought to use the Victoria Falls bridge analogy to explain the gospel in hut-to-hut ministry because we usually had visual aids with which to share the gospel. But on that day, we were without our usual visual aids, and the first group of 5 people about my age knew nothing about Jesus. So I decided to use the analogy and I drew it out in the sand (Botswana is all sand) and it really drew them in, and I explained how Jesus is the only way back to the Father. I am one who would rather someone really think about whether they are going to commit to following Christ so I know they are truly genuine in their commitment, but after we talked for about an hour and I had them explain back to me what the gospel means, they already seemed very genuinely ready to make an informed decision to follow Christ. The guy even had tears in his eyes! So we prayed with them and connected them to a local church where they could grow in their faith.

The next week, we used the bridge analogy in the Vacation Bible School we had in a rural village called Sehitwa. We drew two lines about 25 feet apart and had kids try to long-jump across, and each day as the week went on, we elaborated on the analogy. On the last day we actually built a cross outline out of wood between the two lines and we gave kids the opportunity to accept Christ as their Lord and Savior and then walk across the ‘bridge’ as a public symbol of their commitment to follow Him. We had the oldest kids in our group (12 and 13 years old so they could definitely understand our teachings all week). We did not pressure anyone, and some took longer to decide, but in the end, every last one walked across that bridge and we prayed with them. Praise God! One boy had not smiled all week, but after walking across the bridge, he broke into a huge smile. And throughout that week, the analogy was used by our ministry groups at villagers’ huts and people trusted in Christ for the first time. It was just so cool to see how God could use a simple analogy in so many lives. And it made me realize that God can use anybody to make a difference. If He used me, He can use you.